Mental Illness and Interrogation: How Police Officers' Confidence Measures Up

The purpose of this study was to assess police recruits' confidence in recognizing mental health symptoms, distinguishing them from substance intoxication, and their confidence in interviewing individuals with some sort of mental impairment. Participants for this study consisted of police recruits from a law enforcement training academy in the central United States who participated in a mental health training course as part of their academy training. All participants were asked to complete a pre-intervention and post-intervention survey relevant to confidence in identification and recognition of mental illness and substance intoxication. The treatment group completed the pre-intervention survey prior to the mental health training course and then completed the post-intervention survey after completing the course. The control group completed both surveys without participating in any mental health training.;Analyses indicated that participating in a combined mental health training course increased police recruits' self-reported confidence in recognizing mental illness and substance intoxication in an individual and that it increased their confidence in identification of substance intoxication and mental illness when they viewed videotaped examples of subjects behaving erratically. Further analyses found that age, education level, and previous professions may have served as covariates for between-subject treatment effects and that treatment increased self-reported confidence in interviewing suspects. Results indicated that while the mental health training appeared to increase police recruits' confidence in recognizing mental illness and substance intoxication, it did not necessarily have an impact on their confidence in interviewing subjects determined to be mentally ill. Results of this study suggested the need for future exploration of how police officers understand and learn about mental illnesses, and of how they decide to interact with suspects who may present as mentally ill or intoxicated.